


your telephone calls are my favourite place

by gogywastaken



Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: (additional characters to be added), Long-Distance Friendship, M/M, Phone Calls & Telephones, Pining, Unreliable Narrator, Unrequited Love, the feeling that time is constantly moving on without you, time metaphors as a plot point
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-28
Updated: 2020-12-28
Packaged: 2021-03-10 16:35:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28380264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gogywastaken/pseuds/gogywastaken
Summary: There are 7000 miles between Brighton and Orlando. He can count the hours between them on one hand. He can watch him smile through the screen and he knows, even now, that there will never be enough time to tell him how he feels.
Relationships: Clay | Dream/GeorgeNotFound (Video Blogging RPF)
Kudos: 5





	your telephone calls are my favourite place

**Author's Note:**

> hi ! new work hype let's go, a lot of emphasis on the theoretical idea of time but not too much i don't think. uhh respect boundaries and all that, maybe ill update this later, its 3 am--

> _ \- time is one of the few constants in life _
> 
> _ invariable, unstopping, consistent _
> 
> _ i find in this an unforgiving solace - _

* * *

His phone is ringing. 

He drags himself out from the last remnants of sleep, the faint memories of a dream slowly fading out as he slides his thumb across the screen blindly and presses the device up to his ear.

“Hello?” he murmurs, eyes half-lidded. The sun is peeking through his curtains and painting his room in soft warm hues but he can’t tell if it’s rising or setting, can’t bring himself to care as Dream’s voice filters through his speakers. He’s louder than expected—it must not be that late for him then—but he can’t bring himself to mind it. 

He likes the sound of his voice.

“George! Are you still good to record a new video today? I finished coding that new plugin…” 

George hums softly, sitting up in his bed as he half-listens to Dream ramble on about the newest ideas he had. He likes this side of Dream a lot more than he lets on. It’s nice, he thinks, to have him be the first person he talks to in the morning, the first person he thinks of even. There’s a warmth in his chest when he thinks of him that’s been getting harder to ignore, harder to hide from, harder to live with. 

It’s not necessarily a new development but it’s something he’s been thinking about a lot more. He doesn’t know what to think about it, and for the longest, he just didn’t. The feelings would rise up and he’d stuff them back into the box, lock it and throw away the key. It was easy to ignore when Dream was over the top with it, obnoxious almost with his overwhelming amount of ‘I love you’s and double entendres, but now? It’s hard to ignore with the soft way he says his name sometimes, the fondness in his voice as he gives him Minecraft flowers and netherite ingots. It’s insufferable.  _ He’s _ insufferable.

“...that okay, George? George, are you still there?” George notes an almost concerned note to his voice and he wouldn’t have thought twice about it if it was anyone other than  _ Dream _ .

“Yeah, yeah, ‘m here,” he mumbles sleepily, running a hand through his hair. “Send me the code and I can look over it if you want, make sure you didn’t miss anything.” His words slur together slightly, accent thicker in a way that contrasts Dream’s undeniably American accent.

Dream laughs, reserved unlike his normal wheeze, a soft sound that definitely does not bring heat rising to George’s face. “It’s like 7 for you, are you just now waking up?”

He hums affirmatively, doing the mental math to figure out what time it would be for him. “You’re not much better, Mr. 2-in-the-afternoon,” he snarks playfully. “But yeah, I had a long night.” 

“Doing what?”

_ Thinking about you. _

George shrugs, ignoring the way his heart pounds against his chest. A wake-up call. “Nothing really,” he manages, hoping it comes off as nonchalant. He exhales shakily, dragging a hand down his face and willing himself to calm down before Dream could tell something was up with him. “Messed around some on the smp, did some editing. I just couldn’t sleep.”

It’s not an entire lie, not really. He  _ did _ mess around the smp, in a call with Quackity and Sapnap where he just couldn’t find the energy to match them as they built up new parts of ‘El Rapids’, but he left not even half an hour after joining. And he did at least  _ try  _ to look through the footage they had recorded but the late-night exhaustion just turned the editing into overthinking every interaction they shared until his cheeks were burning and his heart was racing and all he could think about was the way his name sounded so comfortable in Dream’s mouth, like it just belonged there and—

It had been a long night. 

Dream, because he’s a good friend, a good person, sounds concerned at even that. “You idiot, you know you could have called me,” he offers, like it wouldn’t cause more of a problem for George. “That’s one good thing about timezones, right? I’ll probably still be awake when you’re having a long night like that.”

He knows he’s wrong for this, for taking advantage of Dream’s misplaced concern, his selfless kindness, and if he were a better man, he’d say no. He’d keep one layer of distance between them, let time be the barrier that keeps them apart, but he can’t because he’s not. He’s not a good man, a good person, a good friend. He’s selfish in every way possible; he savors the sound of Dream’s voice, the warm feeling in his chest from the misplaced concern. It should scare him, this unforgiving feeling, but it doesn’t. Not anymore. 

Instead, he laughs, a soft quiet thing. “What, like sleep calls? We haven’t done one of those in a while, I’m up for it if you are.” 

“Cool. Let’s do it then.”

* * *

They don’t talk about it. 

Like most things they do, the thought ends up being pushed aside for bigger and better things. It stays on George’s mind for the next few days, words on the tip of his tongue throughout all of their conversations. He wants to ask Dream about it but it never comes up. Between streams and recordings and editing, he hardly finds time to  _ think _ , let alone to ask Dream to spend the night on call with him like they’re teenagers on facetime. 

But at night, when he’s alone with nothing more than his thoughts, he thinks about Dream. His laugh, mostly, and all of the times he got to hear it because of something he had said. He thinks about how there were a lot of times. He thinks about how Dream says his name. There was a donation he got, once, on a speedrun stream with Dream in the call, that said Dream says his name like it’s something special. Dream had laughed it off, turned it into a bit that George half played into for the sake of content, but the words stuck with him past that. He found himself scouring deep into ‘Dreamnotfound proof’ compilation videos in incognito, reading far too into the sound of his name on Dream’s tongue until his cheeks burn red and his stomach twisted uneasily. 

It’s so easy to see the effect Dream has on George when they mess around, edging just so close to the line of ‘too far’ with their jokes, but the same couldn’t be said for Dream. George wanted to know if he made Dream feel the same. He wanted to push his boundaries and figure out what makes him unravel. It’s hard to do it on stream, with thousands of people watching and analyzing his every expression, or even on teamspeak when anyone could just join the channel and draw their own conclusions, but he knows he could if he just took him up on his offer.

He doesn’t know what he would do if he had Dream all to himself so late at night. 

It’s Dream, actually, who calls first. 

The sound of his phone ringing almost scares him in the middle of his far too late editing session and he has half the mind to answer it before it rings out. 

Dream’s voice greets him, a welcomed break from the repeated jokes that half land and awkward silences that fill most of their recordings. “George? Are you busy?”

George looks back at his monitor for a second, eyes straining against the bright light. The video is only maybe a quarter finished and he hasn’t even thought of how to finish it. He really should keep working through it. 

“Not really, no.” 

He smiles at the sound of Dream’s yawn through the speaker. A quick glance at the corner of his screen tells him it’s already nearing 7 for him—a god awful time for anyone to still be awake—and while the thought of staying up editing sounds appealing, staying up to talk to Dream sounds better. 

“Do you mind if...” Dream’s voice trails off. There’s a hint of embarrassment hanging from his words. George doesn’t find himself minding.

“We can just talk,” he offers, shutting off his computer and drowning his room in comfortable darkness. “We can talk and figure it out from there.” 

He’s reminded of the early stages of their friendship, when they would stay on discord for ages just talking about whatever came to mind. It was so much easier then, when the edges of okay and too far were less blurred. It’s how George learned of the little things, things only he gets to know about the other.

He thinks, maybe, it must have started then. This feeling must have grown from there.

Dream’s gentle hum brings him out of his thoughts and he settles into bed at the sound. “We haven’t done that in a while. Just talked, the two of us. I’ve missed you.”

Guilt floods his system because he knows he’s the reason why. It’s easier to ignore it when he’s in a call with Quackity, or Karl. It’s easier to pretend he’s not crossing a line with a buffer between them.

“I’ve missed you too,” he whispers, a sick feeling of honesty coating his words. “Fall asleep with me, like we used to?”  
  
"I'd like that."

**Author's Note:**

> hi again !! let me know what you think, i have an idea of how long this is gonna be but next chapter'll be up during the new year for sure


End file.
